


A Rare Intimacy

by wildandwhirlingwords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adlock, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3845380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildandwhirlingwords/pseuds/wildandwhirlingwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...in silences like these, when he thinks that she is asleep, when he thinks that she cannot hear, he cannot help but give her a name. He cannot help but make her real."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For @adler-esque on Tumblr. Prompt 12, things you said when you thought I was asleep. 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @mydearmoran. If you have prompts or comments, my inbox is open :)

“Goodnight, Irene…” His voice is a whisper against the shell of her ear, his breath sweeping down her spine as a shiver. The back of her neck prickles to feel him so close, gooseflesh rising across her bare skin. They are the first words that he has spoken since he arrived on her doorstep that morning.

He is supposed to be dead. But then again, so is she. 

She arches one perfect black brow but does not ask any questions, his expression mirrors hers perfectly and he offers no explanation.

Morning becomes afternoon. Afternoon bleeds into evening. 

(Red lips. White sheets. Tangled limbs.) 

He comes closer still, one long finger, calloused from years of playing the violin, brushes a stray strand of her dark hair from her eyes. 

“Irene…” He is not calling her; it is almost as if he is testing her name upon his tongue, using it for the very first time. He so seldom utters it aloud that it might as well as have been the first time. If he calls her anything to her face, it is ‘Miss Adler’ (what he calls her behind her back she can only guess) but sometimes – rarely, but sometimes - in silences like these, when he thinks that she is asleep, when he thinks that she cannot hear, he cannot help but give her a name. He cannot help but make her real. 

Call it sentiment, call it what you will. 

“Irene…” It is even more hushed than before, reverent, even. His lips brush over hers with the lightest of touches and the subsequent kiss that he presses to her forehead is filled with a tenderness that his words will never convey. A slow blush creeps up her cheeks, flushing her pale skin with colour, but her eyelids remained closed. She will not relinquish this rare intimacy.

Usually she has to cherish the silence. The thrum of his heartbeat beneath her ear, the soft sounds of his breath as his chest rises and falls, the absence of words meaning that he is comfortable. 

Tonight, something is different, although she does not know what it is. She does not ask, he does not tell.

He lies on his back, staring at the ceiling. Her head is pillowed on his chest, his arm around her shoulders. He hums a melody under his breath almost absently. She has the strangest feeling that she has heard it before and it seems to mean something to him because when he speaks again, for the last time, his throat is constricted. “Sleep well, Irene.” 

She feels another kiss, in her hair this time.  
“Sleep well, Mr Holmes,” she wishes to return, but she cannot for fear that her name will never pass his lips again.


	2. Chapter 2

Dawn.

Neither of them had bothered to close the curtains the night before and she wakes with the sun, the skyline of New York rising up in grey and rose before the glass. 

His eyes are still closed and she takes the opportunity to study him; dark curls splayed out over her white pillows, long dark lashes resting upon pale cheeks. 

He looks tired. Haunted. There are shadows under his eyes, mottled black and purple like bruises, and – 

“Stop. Stop that.” He has not opened his eyes and his voice is still thick with sleep as he shifts slightly under her, a furrow in his brow even as his hands wrap around her thigh and hitch it higher over his hip. “Stop doing that…that thing.” 

She had not realised that he was awake.

“How?” She asks simply, “How do you-” She does not bother denying it, there is no trace of incredulity or awe in her tone, there is no hint of a flush in her alabaster cheeks this morning, but there is interest. She is always interested in the way that his mind works. 

He does not answer immediately. Her question only trails away because once again she has got lost in the small movements that he is making in an effort to wake up. The crease in his forehead becomes more pronounced, his eyelids are scrunched up against the intruding light and they refuse to open, his hand moves to her hip, pulling her closer…

It is not often that she is allowed to see him like this. 

“Well, let’s see…” It is his voice that reminds her that she asked the question, low and deliberate. He starts and then he pauses, pursing his lips and brushing the hair from her eyes in a gesture that is almost inquisitive. “Your breathing, for a start… it’s not quite slow enough for you to be sleeping but you’re not moving around, so… You are awake, and looking at something. There is something poised about the shape of you. Something intent. You are not looking up at the ceiling, there’s nothing interesting there, nothing to hold your attention, so that can’t be it. It’s not the view out of the window because you’ve seen that view a thousand times before. I can feel your breath on my neck… It suggests that you’re positioned slightly above me, looking down, so either you’re looking at me or something about the embroidery on the pillow has caught your eye. Yes, it’s slightly uneven, but that’s hardly noticeable. Therefore… you must be looking at… me.” 

His voice slows from its rapid deduction to a conclusion that almost sounds surprised, and he is hesitant as he opens his eyes, finding hers only inches away, fixed unblinkingly on his and narrowed as she tries to take it all in. 

His eyes narrow back. The feel of her is all around him, in the slip and slide of the silk sheets over his skin, in the prickle of heat between their two bodies, in the heady smell of her perfume that lingers on everything. Drunk on it, he leans in closer. 

Their noses are tip to tip, their lips mere millimetres apart. Her eyes flutter closed in anticipation but before any kiss is sealed, he begins to speak again, his voice little more than a breath. “There is more.”

“Oh yes?” 

“Yes…” His hands ghost up her sides, running his fingertips from her hips all the way up to the column of her throat in a way that elicits a shiver from her. Her eyes are open again, fixed on every movement of his lips as she waits for him to elaborate. “Yes... more than any of that, I know you… I know what you are like…I know what you do. I know you inside out…” 

“I know you inside out…” At his words, a thrill runs along her spine and this acknowledgement that something does indeed exist between them is all that it takes, for the both of them. Her lips meet his in a desperate kiss and he responds immediately, drawing her closer, tumbling her down onto the mattress so that she lies below him, his hands framing her face. He is still tired and she can feel it in the way that his lips move over hers – it is less measured, less careful than it usually is. 

Seconds, minutes, hours seem to pass.

It feels as if he is trying to commit her to memory, as if this kiss is a prelude to a goodbye, and even as she thinks it she feels him trying to draw away. Automatically her fingers tense, nails digging into his neck, but she cannot stop him pulling his lips from hers. 

It has only really been a moment.

“Can’t we at least have this?” she asks, as if her words would ever be enough to seduce him into staying. “Can’t we have more than one night to ourselves?”

He is already shaking his head before she has finished, pushing himself upright again and kicking back the covers. He gets out of bed and turns away from her like he cannot meet her eye. “We’ve had all the time that we are allowed. We’ve had more. I never intended to come at all; I certainly never intended to stay. I have things to do.” 

She lets him dress in silence. She cannot convince him and there is little point in trying, she has no whispers to send him on his way with, no promises to elicit in return. 

“Goodbye then.” When he finally turns back to her, eyes the last things to rise from the carpet, she thinks that she can hear regret in his tone but she shakes that feeling off and climbs out of bed, crossing the room wrapped in only a sheet, her eye catching his, their fingers automatically twining around one another as if by prior consent. 

“Sherlock…”

“No.” 

“Sherlock, can’t you at least tell me where-”

“No. Goodbye,” he says more forcefully, dragging his coat on. He drops her hand to flick up his collar and knot his scarf just so. 

“Sherlock…” 

“Goodbye, Miss Adler.” He tilts her chin up with two fingers and kisses her waiting lips softly, tenderly. Her heart wrenches at the gesture and he sees that in her face as clearly as if she had spoken aloud, but he does not stay.

He never does.

A flick of his Belstaff and he is gone, the tail of it whipping around the corner and out of sight. 

He is always saying goodbye. And she has no choice but to let him.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock always tries to keep her locked away, in a room with wooden floors. She has a penchant for a escaping but at least he hears her coming, the tap tap tap of her expensive shoes echoing in the back of his mind when it is least welcome.

(Her, she. The Woman. Irene.)

Tonight though, there is silence. 

Silence that is too still, too solid. Every whistle of his breath sounds like a gust of wind to his own ears, every beat of his heart is like a battery from a cannon, and his thoughts are louder yet. 

Here in the dark and in the silence, he has no choice but to listen to them. 

He closes his eyes. The shadows disappear and suddenly everything is flooded with a brilliant light. As he watches, the corridor seems to construct itself around him; floorboards roll out beneath his feet, walls build themselves brick by brick, the arches of high rising windows cut out to let the sunshine in. 

For a moment, he just stands there, letting it warm his skin. It has been days since he has seen the sun, maybe weeks; darkness provides a much better cover for flitting from place to place unseen. 

For a moment, he does not realise that the silence has followed him.

She has stayed put. 

His brow furrows and he is flooded by a strange sensation that leaves him feeling hollow. It is not until he identifies this as disappointment that he even realises that he has been searching for her.

Slowly, he reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and draws out a key. It is ornate and gold, old fashioned. It weighs heavy in his palm. The door that it opens almost shapes itself out of thin air at the end of the corridor, but no. This is the same place it always is, the place where it should be.

He has brought himself directly to this place, where only she can be found. And she is waiting for him.

He slots the key into the lock and the click and the creak of the door makes her look up, rouged lips stretching upwards into a smirk.

“You’ve missed me.” It is not a question but a statement. “Usually I have to come looking for you but here you are, all of your own accord…” 

“Here I am,” he echoes. He gets the impression that she is teasing him, but he cannot deny that there is truth in her statement. Very slowly, deliberately, he steps up to the bed. She has discarded her heels and is reclining against the sheets, body bared to him. He slides off his jacket and then begins unbuttoning his shirt as if to join her, but the faintest tut from her halts the movement of his fingers. 

“Let me…” she breathes, and he does not even think about refusing. He sits on the edge of the mattress and she slowly pops the remaining buttons from their holes to reveal pale skin that is mottled purple and black with bruises and shot with angry red scars. 

Her eyes narrow and she looks up at him, fingers absently tracing the map of wounds laid out before her. “Where have you been?”

He runs a hand through his hair and lies down on the bed. He cannot remember the last time that he had had a bed to sleep in; it must have been that night he had spent with her in New York weeks – no, months – ago. He gets lost thinking about it, in his mind within a mind, and does not answer straight away.

She lies beside him, laying her head over his heart as if to comfort herself with the knowledge that it is still beating. She does not repeat herself, she does not need to; he will answer her when he is ready. 

And he does.

They lie there for hours, skin to skin, limbs growing more and more tangled as the tales pour from his lips, bathed in the glow of a sun that never seems to set. She runs her hands up and down his chest, careful not to scratch with those long, crimson nails, and just listens.

Asia. Europe. North America. South America. Tiny strands of Moriarty’s web stretching all across the globe, men hidden in remote corners, each removed one by one. 

But not without injury. 

She is still silent but her lips begin to wander, kissing each cut and bruise as if she could seal them, heal them, with the touch of her lips. Soon, the blood is covered over by a more pleasant shade of scarlet. 

Her head comes to rest back on his chest, tucked under his chin, and softly he strokes her hair, his nose filled with the smell of it, with the smell of her. It lingers everywhere in this one room and it makes his head spin. He is drunk on it, drunk on her. 

It has been too long. Too-

Crash.

Without warning, it is gone. She is gone. There is a crash somewhere outside and he is jolted back to consciousness, the smell of jasmine and hibiscus replaced with the mustiness of old straw. He catches a wheezing breath, the cannon fires in his chest again, and his ribs protest heatedly as he pushes himself upright. Two of them are broken. 

It is still dark, still quiet. Shadows flit past on the walls of the stone barn and he thinks he sees her in them; a snatch of her scent, a streak of red, a sliver of a smile. 

But she only comes when she wishes, not when she is called. Irene Adler does not return to him that night. 

*

 

A week goes by in a blur of days and nights. Two. Three. Four.

A month. Two months. 

All that time, she haunts him. Whether he is awake or sleeping, she ghosts by, never lingering but always undoubtedly there. 

It drives him mad. And then it drives him north. 

He walks, he catches a boat, he walks some more. Eventually, he winds up in New York, outside her apartment. 

He knocks once on the door, casting furtive glances behind him. His clothes are muddy, torn, bloodied. 

Slowly, it is inched open, creaking on its hinges, and her gaze is locked on his with all the intensity that he has missed.

Her eyes widen a fraction, the pupils dilate and her lips part in surprise. They are without rouge, her face natural, free of make up. She is not expecting anyone then, and him least of all, he thinks. Before his name can fall from her tongue, he shakes his head, eyes narrowed slightly, curls bouncing from side to side, dancing in front of his vision. 

His hair has grown too long. She reaches up to smooth it back into place, looking as if she might speak. He puts a finger to his lips, glancing behind him and then into the dim hallway of her apartment. She seems to get the message; her fingers curl around his wrist and she pulls him inside. His pulse flutters up to meet his touch and she smirks.

“You’ve missed me.” 

“I have,” he replies, his voice hoarse. His hands find their way to the back of her neck, his long fingers comb through her hair and his forehead comes down to rest against hers. For several long moments they are still and silent.

Eventually, he draws back just far enough to press a lingering kiss to her forehead, eyes squeezed shut as a tenderness like he has never known courses through his veins at the simple touch of his lips to her skin.

“Where have you been?” she asks. Broken images flit through his mind; a shaft of sunlight, two bodies, skin to skin, lips spinning an intricate web of intrigue and injury.

In the end, he just shrugs. “It does not matter. I am here now. And it’s here I’m going to stay.”


End file.
